In this new era of remote working, employers may think that the risk of sexual harassment is no longer a major concern, and therefore, prevention training should not be a high priority. Unfortunately, this reasoning relies on misconceptions about harassment and can lead to serious problems for an employer, including challenging employee relations issues, disruption of business operations, embarrassing news coverage that can damage an organization’s brand and bottom line, and costly litigation and liability under federal and state anti-harassment laws.

As we previously shared, California employers with 5 or more employees are required to provide harassment prevention training to all employees no later than January 1, 2021. The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) recently released its long-awaited, free online training for non-supervisory employees. This interactive training is one-hour in duration, optimized for mobile phones, accessible to people with disabilities, and available in Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Korean. The DFEH plans to release a two-hour supervisory training module in the coming months.

As we shared back in April, a 2018 law requires all employers with five or more employees in California to provide effective, interactive harassment prevention training to all employees in the state: two (2) hours for supervisory employees and one (1) hour for non-supervisory employees. The deadline for complying with this law was originally January 1, 2020. However, California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed legislation (SB 778) extending the deadline by one year, giving employers until January 1, 2021 to complete this training.

As we head into Q2, now is a good time to remind California employers of their obligation to provide harassment prevention training to employees during 2019.